Credit Writedowns

Yesterday, I laid out some of my general thinking on the business cycle and the economy. Obviously, understanding the business cycle is important to economic forecasting and is, therefore, central to personal financial planning, general…

Yesterday, I said that investors would begin to focus on the real economy now that the financial crisis has eased somewhat due to massive government intervention. Today, retail sales figures for September 2008 were released by the United…

SourceTom Toles Cartoons - Washington Post

Conservative U.S. Columnist Kathleen Parker was a guest on Stephen Colbert's show last night. She gained notoriety for her criticism of Sarah Palin as John McCain's running mate. Below is a clip of her on Colbert giving her two cents on…

Now that policy makers worldwide have finally stepped in to stop the bleeding, we have had a relief rally of monumental proportions. Most global indices were deep into oversold territory, meaning that there was lots of pent-up demand for a…

In Scotland, one of the UK's most venerated names, the Royal Bank of Scotland, a bank that prints its own bank notes as legal tender, has been eviscerated by the over-leveraging and risk-taking of its CEO Sir Fred Goodwin. Sir Fred, an…

As the economy has faltered, George W. Bush's approval numbers have plummeted. All of this has occurred despite Americans' belief that the strategy in Iraq is bearing fruit. And last year, Iraq was a central issue for most voting…

Now that we have seen our massive 1000-point rally, we can come back down to earth and worry about the real economy effects that the credit crisis has already wrought and ho well money markets are going to respond to all this monetary…

This amazing chart is interactive at the NYTimes:

I knew today was going to be a fantastic day for equities given what we saw in Asia overnight and in Europe. But, 936 points up for the Dow is pretty spectacular. As bad as this past Thursday was for the market in general and financial…